


Interplanetary Crossfire

by SneakyHufflepuff



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Minor Violence, Political Themes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-24
Updated: 2014-03-29
Packaged: 2018-01-16 19:49:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1359673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SneakyHufflepuff/pseuds/SneakyHufflepuff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a galaxy far far away... a Star Wars AU!</p><p>The planet Fuente was poised on the brink of war between its two native species, the Ir'si and the Xar. Nearby, on the planet Budapest, the only diplomat that could halt the conflict had drawn the attention of the Sith. The fearsome Black Widow was assigned to eliminate her and jumpstart the war. Clint Barton, newly made Jedi Knight, was assigned to bring in the Black Widow, dead or alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A New Mission

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to endeni for the push and the support, and many thanks to alphaflyer for the beta!

Natasha ducked under the wing of her starfighter, _Widow’s Bite_ , moving to repair a loose cable. In her mind, she replayed the orders she had received, analyzing every word. It was a standard kill mission, the kind she was put on every few months or so to prove her usefulness to the Sith. Ever since she had finished her apprenticeship by killing her master, and then made it clear she had no interest in the foolish crusade against the Jedi, she and her fellow Sith were in an uneasy co-existence. 

Some sense tingled at the back of her mind that this mission was not like the others, and while her Force talents had never tended towards precognition, she made it her business to trust her instincts. The only thing that seemed off about the mission was the planet that her target called home: Budapest. She had never heard of it. 

Natasha brought out her battered encyclopedia, a clunky screen large enough that she had to use both hands to hold it. It didn’t rival the big planetary libraries, but in a universe with so much to learn and so little information available at short notice, it was her second-most valuable possession, behind only her ship, her beloved V-19 Torren Starfighter.

Hefting the encyclopedia, she keyed in the planet Budapest. A hologram of the medium-sized planet, covered mostly in blue-grey water, hovered in front of her. The vital information was written in glowing Galactic Basic next to the image. 

She ground her teeth; with her ship, barely big enough for herself and the hyperdrive, Budapest was seven standard days from her current location. That meant she would have to finish her current con with less finesse then she’d prefer. Still, the planet itself should be easy enough to infiltrate. Sparsely populated, it hovered on the line between the Inner and Outer Rim worlds, with just enough money and culture that a curious traveller would not be out of place.

Natasha flicked away the image of the planet, replacing it with still images of the major city on the planet, also called Budapest. Her encyclopedia didn’t have the memory for holorecordings of every backwater, so she had to make do with one-dimensional pictures. Her eyes roved over some of the images, noting the mix of races (mostly human) and the fashion (heavily Core influenced). Then, at the corner of one of the images she saw something that froze her blood. A small green lizard, attached, apparently innocuously, to a tree. Ysalamir. Spast!

***

Clint whirled, his lightsabre catching the dart at the last moment. The darts from the training remote did little more than sting, but it was an accomplishment to run through an entire simulation without being hit. The lightsabre still felt foreign in his hands compared to his blaster. 

“Barton!” Fury had suddenly appeared at the door of the training room.

“Master Fury,” Clint replied, calmly. He didn’t know why Fury still felt the need to yell a full year after Clint had completed his apprenticeship with the older man.

“The Council has a mission for you.” Fury stated, dark brown robes swirling around him.

Clint couldn’t help but shoot Fury a look of disbelief. The Council had made it clear that the only reason a borderline Force-sensitive smuggler was allowed to join the Order was Fury’s intervention.

“Come with me,” Fury ordered. 

Clint followed behind him, robes and all. The hallways outside the training room were wide and shone with the light from two suns. The occasional Jedi striding past would give them privacy, no doubt intent on missions of their own in the unceasing quest to bring peace to a universe that was always on the edge of war.

“You’ve heard of the Black Widow?” Fury asked as the walked, his unhurried steps belying his serious visage.

“The Sith who isn’t a Sith?” Clint asked. “Sure, who hasn’t?”

“She will be on the planet Budapest in a week. You need to apprehend her before she leaves, and before she carries out her planned assassination. The Order is close to making peace between some of the locals, and any upsets could put the region back into decades of war.”

The mission sounded too tough for one Jedi and too delicate for someone like Clint.

“You’re sending me, alone?” Clint asked, careful to show no impertinence, knowing the Jedi distaste for it.

“There’s one catch. Budapest contains a colony of ysalamir. For approximately two thirds of the planet, the Force is blocked,” explained Fury.

Ysalamir, small lizard creatures, created a bubble around them where the Force simply ceased to be. With each ysalamir the bubble increased exponentially. Their presence explained why the Order needed a man accustomed to combat before he became a Jedi. The best Knights had been training with the Force since early childhood, without it they would be severely weakened

“And Clint, the Jedi do not kill, except in self-defense. Do you understand me?” Fury said, stalking in front of Clint, towards the library where the briefing would start.

“Yes, Master Fury,” Clint said, face impassive. That was Fury’s way of saying he would not be unhappy if the Widow came back in a body bag.

“Good. Your ship is waiting.”


	2. Strike one for the bad guys

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to alphaflyer and incredibly lovely and patient shenshen77 for the beta. (Profuse apologies to shen for not thanking her in the first chapter!)
> 
> Content warning for (non-graphic) gun violence and other violence.

Her encyclopedia hadn’t done Budapest justice. It was a world of striking beauty, elaborate architecture punctuated with spiral towers and metallic domes. She would be enjoying herself immensely, were it not for the fact that most of the city, bar the underground tunnels, was covered in yslamir. Pests.

Still, a sniper rifle didn’t need the Force to work. She looked through her sight, hovering it over the head of the diplomat she was here to kill, Tahl Sloan. The woman was coming distressingly close to forging a peace between two species on a nearby dirtball of a planet, Fuente. The conflict was a running distraction for the Jedi, so the Sith were invested in making sure it was never resolved. 

Sloan was part of a bigwig parade, some local celebration that made it even easier than Natasha thought it would be to blend into the crowd. As a former merchant and a current diplomat, Sloan was well liked on her native planet. This meant she had the position of honor in the parade, perched on a float that made her an easy target. Natasha would have preferred to eliminate Sloan at close range, maybe plant some DNA evidence, but her security team was good, so the parade was Natasha's only real shot. 

Some part of Natasha felt guilty. By pulling the trigger she would be killing not only Sloan, but also hundreds, possibly thousands of others. She took a deep breath, locking the guilt away. She was being paid, and had resigned herself to the kill or be killed reality of her existence long ago. 

Sloan had to die, and it had to look like a primitive extremist, angry at the peace talks, had done the deed. Thus Natasha’s use of a projectile rifle, instead of the more civilized blaster. 

The rumored arrival of a Jedi was the only sour note in her plans. Odds were he was here for some other reason, but she couldn’t take the chance he would interfere, as his breed so often did. 

Natasha took the shot, and was dismayed to see it go off target due to the wind, past Sloan’s ear. Without the Force she was just that little bit slower, that little bit less accurate. She adjusted her aim minutely and shot again, before the security detail could react. A headshot. Good, no chance of recovery. Tahl Sloan was dead, for better or for worse.

Natasha left the rifle where it was, and began to run towards the docks, hoping to get off-planet before the Jedi even knew she was here. 

***

Clint eased his ship, _Longbow_ , towards the docks, going over the little information he’d learned over the course of his voyage. One nearby planet, Fuente, was home to two species that had been fighting for control of the major continent for the past century with heavy casualties on both sides. The Xar, a silicon based species, were more numerous but the Ir’si, feathered humanoids, controlled the water supply and were far wealthier. Clint had never seen an Ir’si before, but recalled seeing Xar at spaceports over the years hauling cargo. According to the minimal files Fury had given him, the Xar often worked offworld and sent money back home to their families. The Ir'si preferred to stay inside their nests, exporting their goods off world with the help of human merchants from Budapest. At the moment they existed in a fragile ceasefire, one that he was responsible for protecting.

 _Longbow_ shuddered as he hit the landing pad. It had served him well for many years as a smuggler, but it was well past its prime, and the Jedi still hadn’t provided the parts he’d asked for, meaning that he was a day behind schedule. This was supposedly an important mission, but the Jedi certainly hadn’t outfitted him with their best resources. He supposed he should be grateful that they’d given him this chance to prove himself at all.

He left the ship after a quick check of the vital systems. His Jedi robes marked him as a stranger, and his inability to use the Force made him nervous, even if he had only been aware of his abilities for the past few years.

According to his intel, the Black Widow was already on planet, so he should start shadowing the diplomat immediately. Unfortunately, Budapest was one of the many places where the Jedi were not particularly respected, so convincing her of his good intentions was going to be difficult.

Screams filled the air, and Clint’s hand went to his blaster by reflex. A Gran rushed by him, stalks bobbing up and down as it ran, terrified. Well, Fury said you could tell a true Jedi by who was stupid enough to run _towards_ the screaming.

Three human women ran by, also terrified. Clint pushed forward, until the glint of one woman’s red hair stopped him. He turned around to see her disappear behind a corner of the metal corridor. He began sprinting after her, hoping it wasn’t too late. His boots slapped against the metal of the floor, and he could see her speeding up in response to the noise. She was fast and agile, but he was slowly gaining ground. She turned around another corner, and Clint barreled after her, only to find the corridor empty. He looked up, afraid she would drop from the ceiling, but there was only empty space. 

A faint scrape of something against metal drew his attention to the garbage chute. He cursed, and pulled himself into it. What would have been an easy fit for the Widow was uncomfortably tight for Clint, and he squeezed his way down, hoping his quarry wasn’t waiting with a blaster at the bottom.

The garbage chute let out into a series of furnaces, thankfully turned off. Clint picked his way through the different layers of trash, picking up a few un-Jedi like stains as he went. From the furnaces there was an access tunnel, presumably for the maintenance droids, and Clint ran along it, feeling the vibrations from someone running in front of him. He picked up the pace, until the tunnel widened out to a metal corridor like the one on the higher level. 

He could tell he was in the depths of the city, and the rooms he passed appeared to be storage space. They were locked, so he kept going until he saw a flash of red up ahead. He increased his speed, breathing heavily, wishing he had Force-enhanced endurance to draw from. Even in the bowels of the space station the yslamir population blocked his abilities.

He passed by a stack of crates as the Widow came into view, running across a bridge that separated his stretch of the corridor from an identical one on the other side. She began to cut at the bridge between them. Clint judged the distance between them and knew he wasn’t going to make it before the bridge fell. He pushed forward anyway.

Awareness of the Force flooded through him, just as the redheaded Sith used her lightsabre to cut the last support holding the bridge up. It hung in the air for a moment, then fell into an abyss so deep he couldn’t see the bottom. She grinned at him in triumph.

Clint reached out with the Force, targeting the weak spots in the ceiling of the corridor behind her, The ceiling collapsed with a deafening crash, rubble filling the corridor. For once he was glad that it was easier to break something than to create it. It would take many hours to lift the rubble, even for the most talented Force user. She was trapped as long as he was here, but now he wouldn’t be able to reach her without making himself vulnerable. He sighed. Stalemate.

The Widow looked contemptuously at him, openly laughing. He leveled his blaster towards her and shot, only to have her dodge the bolts with ease, not even bothering to use her lightsabre to block them.

“That the best you can do, Jedi?” she asked, a wicked grin on her face, as if she were having fun.

“Give it up, Widow, you’re trapped. The local security forces are probably already on their way.” 

“What’s the matter? Got an appointment? I prefer to wait here.” She sneered at him.

His danger sense tingled and he threw himself to the ground, just as a crate tore through the space where his head had been. It came back around for a second pass, and was joined by two others, all hurtling towards him.

Breathing deeply, Clint reached out with the Force, wishing he had the raw power of Fury, or Hill's flawless control. The crates slowed, but continued towards him. He might not have much in power or control, but he had stubbornness on his side. Sweat running down his face, lungs heaving, he brought the crates to a halt, then threw them down into the abyss. He hoped whoever was storing them here had bought insurance.

The Widow was looking at him in surprise. Something like resignation flickered in her eyes. For a heartbeat she looked impossibly tired. Then, deliberately, she let her lightsabre fall from her hand, following the crates down into the darkness. 

“I’m unarmed, and you can’t kill an unarmed prisoner.”

Clint snorted. With the Force on her side, she was never unarmed. Still, he put his blaster on his belt. 

“Come on over, carefully.”

The Widow smiled, and in a move that would have been impossible for anyone but a Force-user, took a running jump back to Clint’s side of the bridge. He backed away. What was she playing at?

“So, how are you going to keep me prisoner in that little ship of yours?” She asked, almost innocently, making no move towards him.

“It’s three days until Fuente. I’m sure I’ll manage.”

He was taking her to Fuente, to seek justice and, more importantly, try to stop the conflict between the Xar and the Ir’si before it re-ignited. If only he had been able to get here a day sooner. Mere days into his mission and he’d already failed.


	3. Jedi are smarter than they look

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint and Natasha begin their journey to Fuente.
> 
> Thanks to shenshen77 for the beta.

Two guards held their blasters trained on her as they walked her towards the Jedi's ship. One of them prodded Natasha hard in the small of her back. 

"I can't wait until the Birdies fry you alive," she whispered. "Hopefully they'll send us a recording."

Birdies was the nickname for the Ir'si that many of the humans used. 

"We could have an accident, right here. These blasters misfire all the time." The other guard jabbed her shoulder blade for emphasis.

Natasha shrugged off the attacks and rolled her eyes as she walked towards the landing pad. She was tempted to lunge at the guards to see if they would really shoot her. The tugging of her cuffs and the desire to leave Budapest kept her from giving into that temptation. 

The Jedi had put her in two sets of cuffs, one around her ankles and the other holding her hands behind her back. They wouldn’t have been a hindrance in normal circumstances, but without the Force she would need several hours to get out of them. The door to the spaceport landing pad whooshed open, revealing the Jedi’s ship.

Natasha gave the ship a once over. She didn’t need Force-granted intuition, now blanketed by the thrice-cursed ysalmir, to see that the ship’s best days were behind it. It barely shone, despite the two suns in the Budapest system reflecting off every other surface. It was a collection of ancient parts that had the maneuverability of a wounded bantha and barely more of a weapons payload than the standard X-wing. The worst of both worlds. Still, once she was free of this yslamir ridden planet she could get rid of the cuffs, kill the Jedi and take control of the ship. She could pick up _Bite_ once the furor on Budapest had died down.

“Ready to get going?” the Jedi asked, smirking. 

She stopped herself from jumping at his sudden appearance. He must have finished sending messages about the situation back to his masters in the futile hope of stopping the conflict. It was a false hope; she had done enough reading to know that nothing would stop the bloodshed now that the fuse had been lit.

“You should feel special, not many Sith have had the opportunity to travel on _Longbow_. She’s the best ship in the galaxy.”

Natasha gave him a look of disdain, and began walking up the ramp towards the ship’s cabin. Let him take her away from the anthill she had kicked, and towards his death.

“It has one special feature,” he continued, undaunted by her silence. “The controls are keyed to me. No one else can drive it.”

Natasha kept walking, not giving the man the satisfaction of seeing her frustration. She had confidence in her ability to work around his safeguards, given time. But they were yet another obstacle. 

“I’m Clint. Clint Barton,” he continued.

“Well, Clint, does your ship have a shower?” Natasha asked, wrinkling her nose. “Because after you romped through the garbage…”

She let him finish the thought for himself and swept up the rest of the walkway, noting out of the corner of her eye that Barton was looking down at his clothes self-consciously. The two guards stayed at the edge of the landing pad, eyes unfocused as they already contemplated their next task.

Natasha slipped into the cabin, grateful that the suns were no longer beating down on her. The cabin itself was as dingy as the rest of the ship, with marks and stains on every surface. There were two battered chairs in front of controls that were already ancient when she was born. She put her back to the wall, and got to work on weakening her cuffs.

She could see Barton through the screen. He was talking to some droid, who handed him a crate. Supplies for the trip no doubt. Hopefully there would be something there she could scavenge after she killed him. 

***

Clint followed the Widow up the walkway, muscles barely straining to hold the crate, a lifetime of carting semi-legal merchandize around the galaxy serving him well.

He was as ready to leave Budapest as he was to get to Fuente. The Budapest officials had made it clear the only reason they were allowing him to leave with the Widow was that the Ir'si and the Xar had the death penalty, while the more "civilized" Budapest Government did not. Spending three days in a confined space with an assassin probably wasn’t good for his life expectancy. Unfortunately, the situation on Fuente was volatile enough that he knew any efforts at continuing the talks would be difficult, even with the assassin in hand. He’d already let Hill know that he’d apprehended the culprit. Hopefully she could keep a lid on things until he got there.

He settled into the pilot’s chair, keeping the Widow in his peripheral vision. She was looking around the cabin, no doubt scouting for weak points. He engaged the thrusters, and managed not to smile too broadly when she fell to the ground in an undignified heap.

He was halfway through Budapest’s atmosphere when she got to her feet, all offended grace. He set the co-ordinates to Fuente, straight-faced.

“Clint Barton. I remember your name now. The smuggler. Who made _you_ a Jedi?”

“Didn’t realize I was that famous, darling,” Clint said, voice mild, seeing if he could provoke the Widow into revealing something about herself.

Clint finished setting the coordinates, putting a course on auto-pilot that cut to the edge of safety. Absent sabotage, the ship should take them to Fuente inside three standard days.

“Did they run out of impressionable youngsters? Decided that they needed a few mongrels as canon-fodder? Fury was always more pragmatic than most Jedi.”

“They decided if they couldn’t catch me, they’d recruit me instead.” He winked at the Widow, not showing that her barb had stung. 

She seemed to be waiting for something as they cleared the atmosphere. 

“Waiting for the Force to kick in?” he asked, gesturing to the crate. “It’s a shame I decided to bring a couple of pets with me. I’m thinking of naming them. I kind of like the names Tony, Thor and Bruce. Your thoughts?”

He opened the crate to show her three yslamir, attached to life support systems that should work for at least a standard month. Together, the three lizards would be enough to block out the existence of the Force entirely on his tiny ship. 

The Widow seemed lost for words. Clint tried to feel triumphant at his victory, tried to hate her for her actions, but he just felt sad. If only the Jedi had gotten to her before the Sith, neither of them would be in this mess. 

“Now, let me escort you to your room for the duration of the journey.” He ushered her towards the bare cargo hold, where there was a door he could lock from outside.

 _Longbow_ ’s first owners had used the ship to buy and sell sentient cargo, before Clint had absconded with the vessel. Some part of Clint recoiled from using his ship for a similar purpose, but it wasn’t like he had any other way to transport the Widow.

The Widow glowered at him from inside the cargo hold, then smiled sweetly. He could almost see the wheels turn in her head. It was going to be a long trip. 

“Clint, was it? I have a feeling we’ll get to know each other well.”

“Don’t count on it, sweetheart,” Clint replied.

Clint shut the door firmly in front of her face, sealing the Widow in the hold, at least for now.


	4. Interlude I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Interlude I: Jedi Knight Maria Hill is informed of Sloane's death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to alphaflyer for the beta!

Maria looked up from her holocube profile of the Xar leader, Kuf. It was nothing she hadn’t seen before, but she was hoping if the gears of her mind churned through the information one more time, she would find a solution.

The hologram of Kuf looked like a collection of silver rocks, with the exception of three eyes glaring balefully at whomever had recorded the image. Kuf, a long time activist and rumored guerilla leader, was the only one who could unite enough of the Xar to be a credible leader, but her husband had died from a minor injury during an Ir’si siege of Xar settlements twenty years ago, when the Ir’si had blocked medical treatment from reaching him. Her thirst for revenge meant that the only deal she would accept was one where the Ir’si paid in some way. Kuf’s son, Lekuf, was more moderate and the heir apparent to the unofficial Xar leadership, but was too young to gain Xar respect for three more years at least. 

She had the opposite problem with the Ir’si. Their leader Ne’shi, a true moderate who desired peace, was slowly dying, probably from a poison attack. It was difficult to tell what went on in the Ir’si enclaves. They detested outsiders. 

She flicked to the image on her holocube of Ne’shi waving serenely. Like all Ir’si, Ne’shi was startlingly human apart from the brown feathers that blanketed his body. Unfortunately, all of Ne’shi’s potential successors were positioning themselves to show their bloodthirsty side. After a century of conflict, their aim was to reduce the Xar to dust. It would take decades to bring both sides to the table if she and Sloan couldn’t forge some sort of peace in the next few weeks. 

In the peace-making exercises the Jedi had trained her with, there was always a way out. She just couldn’t see one in this case. Her hands dropped to the lightsabre at her belt, more a sign of her rank than a useful tool here on Fuente. She wished she had been given a mission tracking down Sith, or guarding some important leader. 

Her Holonet interface beeped. She had two messages, both from Budapest. Maybe Sloan had an important idea, or discovered something important that could help them. She played the first message. It was only thirty seconds, from a minor Budapest official. 

“To Maria Hill,” the message began. The message was in a two dimensional format, showing the face and shoulders of a greasy looking human male.

Maria bristled at the deliberate lack of her hard-earned title of Jedi Knight. The Jedi were only tolerated in this part of the galaxy. 

The message continued. “We regret to inform you that Tahl Sloan has been assassinated, seemingly by a Xar or Ir’si weapon. As a result, the government of Budapest has decided it will no longer be involved in the peace talks. We wish you the best.” The man nodded insincerely and the message cut off. 

Maria swore out loud. The Ir’si also had faster than light communication even if, like her, they were constrained by how much data the ancient communications satellites could send. The news would break in a matter of minutes, and then the shooting would start. Mourning for Sloan would have to wait until she did her job. Maria played the second message, hoping it was all a terrible mistake.

A two dimensional image of Clint Barton, a Jedi she had met only in passing, appeared on her screen. 

“Hill, Sloan is dead. I captured the assassin, a Sith.” He was speaking rapidly, out of breath. “I told the Budapest government what happened, but they think she’s hired by the Ir’si or the Xar. They don’t believe that the Sith would do this.”

They probably had, but were just looking for an excuse to distance themselves from an ugly conflict. Sloan had been one of the only decent politicians in this part of the galaxy, or really the entire galaxy, Hill thought ruefully. Of course the Sith would want to kill her. 

“I’m bringing her to you, and I should be on Fuente in three days. I don’t have communication in transit. I’m sorry!”

The message clicked off. Hill took a deep breath, mind slotting together what little information that she had. Then she sprung in action, placing a call to Kuf, mind already whirling. She was going to call an emergency meeting and try to keep a lid on things until Barton got here. Maybe her lightsabre would get some use after all.


End file.
